Political Geography is
the study of the spatial patterns of conflict and cooperation among political
actors at all scales. The struggle of states for territory and resources has
always been a key theme. Likewise, the impact of national identities in forming
states, and the use of landscape and territorial symbols, or iconography provides
insights into how geographical phenomena are deployed in struggles for power
over earth space, whether terrestrial, oceanic or atmospheric.

State:
defined as a bounded political unit with territory, population, and organized
government possessing power and sovereignty (Use the mnemonic device
“T-POPS”). This last term denotes supreme authority within the territory of
the state, and recognition by other states that this authority is legitimate.
The state is the primary unit of analysis in what is often referred to as
‘international relations’ or IR. In political geography, we study how
and where states seek to consolidate or expand control over territory, people
and natural resources This is done through diplomacy, and various forms of
coercion, including trade embargoes, blockades and other military measures up to
and including war.

The state is very old, with many
historians and political scientists considering the various Greek, Roman and
Chinese models as ancient examples, more than 2000 years ago. Some political
geographers, such as Peter Taylor, have called these early states ‘world
empires,’ because they dominated the worlds known to their subjects. In its
modern form, the state evolved in Europe from about 1500, typically in core
areas (eg Paris basin) dominated by a focused and determined monarchy. By about
1900, the state system had been spread through colonialism throughout the world,
particularly in Latin America, Africa and Asia, regions that had been host to a
wide variety of political arrangements.

State System:
The modern state system is usually dated to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,
which ended a bloody European religious conflict called the Thirty Years War.
From this point forward, the conflicts in Europe were no longer religiously
based, but developed through clashes between monarchical governments over
balance of power issues and overseas territories. After the French Revolution
(1789), anti-monarchical republican forms of government added another element in
the long struggle between Great Powers such as Britain and France. Gradually,
over the next century and a half, the Ottoman, Russian and Hapsburg empires gave
way to various forms of states. This reflected the social and economic changes
due to the industrial revolution, which in turn led to the rise of socialism
(discussed in theory section below) and nationalism, which is the
ideology that privileges national identity over all other forms of human
loyalty. Scholars say that nationalism as an ideology demands that individuals
put their state or country first, even to the point of the (in)famous saying,
‘My country right or wrong.’

Nation:
defined by sociologist Benedict Anderson as an “imagined community,” a
nation is a group of people with a shared heritage who believe that they belong
together, and who almost always develop political aspirations for special
recognition, and perhaps a territorially-based state. These identities generally
develop over long periods of historical time, typically centuries, though elites
play a role in creating a sense of nationalism, which can develop within a
generation. The Basque region of Spain and the Kurdish populations of Southwest
Asia have often been identified as non-state nations, ie people without their
own sovereign territorial unit, some of whom aspire to create such an entity.
Many can be identified today, and these phenomena are a major factor in
conflicts within states that refuse to recognize their claims.

Identities (ethnic and national):
this concept relates to the deepest aspects of how humans think about and
identify themselves, and refers to how individuals and other actors in society
self-ascribe. Think of your own situation. Are you a Euro-, African-,Latino- or
Asian American? Do you prefer to think of yourself as simply ‘American’? If
you are of Arab descent, do you call yourself ‘Arab’? Or perhaps Jordanian
or Yemeni? If you are from Taiwan, are you Chinese or Taiwanese? If born in
Germany, German or European? If you are a religious person, perhaps your
identity as a Christian (Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox), Hindu, Muslim,
Buddhist or Jew is of the greatest importance. These decisions by people
(whether as individuals, households or groups) have an impact on politics within
states, and on transnational issues relating to conflict and cooperation.

Territory:
Every state controls it own piece of terrestrial space, as well as the
atmosphere above it, and (if it has a coastline), the waters out to twelve
nautical miles, and the resources of its continental shelf (see discussion
below). If an ethno-national group aspires to statehood, its political leaders
will typically advance a territorial claim, and proceed to struggle toward the
realization of a new state. This idea of territoriality ties in with scale.
Geographers Guntram Herb and David Kaplan refer to the manner in which scale and
territory intermesh in the form of ‘nested identities.’ This means
individuals and groups prioritizes a certain scale in self-ascription. The
particular situation of the individual or group will impact the way s/he or it
self-identifies. While nobody truly has total freedom in these decisions,
different persons and groups will identify themselves by prioritizing a certain
scale.

Territory is also a part of
iconography. This is the use of key landscape symbols in the creation of a national
identity. Think of poetry and songs that use the imagery of the physical
geography of regions to inspire patriotic fervor (‘America the Beautiful’ is
an excellent example).

Territorial Morphology:
The shapes of states can have an impact on the ability of ruling governments to
impose law and policy on state territory. While this is not a ‘hard and
fast’ rule, states with territorial outliers are sometimes vulnerable to
separatist political tendencies. We can use a term from physics to think about
the state’s ability to rule its territory effectively. Centripetal forces
are those institutions, customs and symbols designed to keep a state together. Centrifugal
forces, such as regional inequalities and ethnic division, are those
conditions or forces that tend to tear a state apart. Compact states are
those with a minimum of variation in distance between the center and peripheral
boundaries of the state. An atlas will reveal several good examples: Uruguay in
South America, Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, Poland in Europe and Cambodia in
Southeast Asia Generally, these states could be easier to rule, but the
principle does not always hold if ethnic conflict and corrupt governance are in
evidence. Zimbabwe, for example, is very unstable. Nevertheless, these states
tend not to experience separatist movements. Elongated states simply have
a national territory that is long and narrow. Chile and Vietnam are examples. If
the state has only one economic and political core region, as in Chile,
then the state institutions will usually be able to impose power over distant
regions more easily. If however, two core regions exist, as is the case with
Vietnam (in the North around Hanoi, and in the South around Saigon or Ho Chi
Minh city), then the state could very well experience political turbulence and
division, as actually has occurred in Vietnamese history. Fragmented
states are divided into multiple pieces of territory, separated by water bodies
or other states. Island states such as Japan and Indonesia are good examples.
Here, two states experience very different political outcomes. Japan has become
a wealthy core economic state, with a largely homogeneous ethnic population
(98-99% Japanese). It has little difficulty in ruling its territory. Indonesia
is another matter entirely. This vast archipelago sweeps across the Indian Ocean
to the Melanesian portion of the Pacific World, with over 13,000 islands! Inside
its territory, many islands include ethnic groups that are hostile to each
other, for religious and other reasons. Indonesia recently lost the territory of
East Timor, whose population had been fighting for independence since the
1970’s. It became the world’s newest state in 2002. Indonesia is a
relatively poor peripheral country in the global economy, and this no doubt
contributes to its political difficulties. Prorupt states can also
experience political turbulence. Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) provide examples.
These states have a relatively compact core region, with a long territorial
extension. In both cases, the regions of extension contain ethnic groups that
are not well integrated into the state. In Thailand, a overwhelmingly Buddhist
society, the provinces in the southern tip of the country, near Malaysia, are
inhabited by Muslim peoples who feel little attachment to the state of which
they are a part. This region has recently (as of 2004) experienced civil unrest.
If ethnically distinct and economically poor people live in these prorupt
regions, or any peripheral region in a state, then conditions are favorable for
the development of separatism. Perforated states are a rarity; two examples will
suffice. The state of Lesotho, landlocked and surrounded by South Africa, forms
a perforation in that larger country, and is at the mercy of South Africa for
its economic well-being, and political survival. In a previous era, up to 1989,
the former German Democratic Republic (or East Germany) was perforated by the
city formerly known as West Berlin. That city is now united as the capital of
the unified Federal Republic of Germany.

Boundaries and Frontiers:
The boundaries separating states are known as international boundaries, and they
establish the territorial limits of the legal authority of states. These
boundaries can be physical or cultural. From the standpoint of political
geography, all state territories are separated from each other by legally
recognized boundaries, though many of these are contested, sometimes leading to
military conflict between states.

Physical or Natural
boundaries typically entail the use of rivers and mountains. At first
glance, these might seem to be useful due to their apparent clarity, visibility
and distinctiveness on the earth’s landscapes. But look more closely and we
can see that mountains can be divided peak to peak or by ridgelines, which
separate the headwaters of rivers. These two features do not always coincide. An
example of a border dispute involving mountainous boundaries is that between
India and China over two separate subregions in their Himalayan boundary: In the
far western edge of their international border, Aksai Chin is between Indian
Kashmir and the Chinese province of Xinjiang. To the east, we find another
region between India’s far northeastern region of Arunachal Pradesh, and the
eastern edge of Tibet, which is ruled by China. These are not minor matters.
China and India fought a brief war over these boundary disputes in 1962.
Geopolitically, the two states are still antagonists. As for rivers, some of
those used for boundaries can change course! An example is the Rio Grande, which
forms the boundary between Mexico and the United States. This boundary had to be
renegotiated between the two states, which have a history of antagonism and
conflict dating back to the wars of Texas independence (1836) and 1846-48.
Fortunately, this history of conflict has changed drastically to one of greater
cooperation in recent decades.

Artificialboundaries
are delimited or imposed through the recognition of historical custom, by treaty
or by the will of a stronger power. Antecedent boundaries existed on the
cultural landscape prior to the emergence of the formal state system. Subsequent
boundaries develop with the ethno-cultural divisions of a regional
landscape. These are then adjusted through conflict and negotiation, changing
with the relative strengths of the parties involved. Superimposed boundaries
were typically drawn by colonial states. The best examples of these types of
boundaries are the geometric lines drawn by European powers in Africa during the
19th century. The political consequences of these geographies would
prove to be very difficult indeed for newly independent African states in the 20th
century. Finally, relict boundaries are no longer politically recognized,
but reflect previous political conditions. Examples include the 17th
parallel division of Vietnam into northern and southern states, made relict by
the collapse of the southern state in 1975. More recently, Germany’s Cold War
boundary between eastern and western entities ceased to exist with the collapse
of the Communist East German state in 1989-90. These various types of boundaries
are also discussed with maps in Map 11 of your Atlas.

Offshore or Maritime boundaries
refer to international boundaries over water. The laws and customs of centuries
have been encapsulated in the 1982 draft treaty of the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The
convention delimits territorial boundaries and rights over resources, using a
series of four zones, with each successive zone representing diminishing control
by a state. A territorial sea ranges up
to 12 nautical miles (19 km) or ‘nm’ (a nautical mile is 1.15 statute
miles), and within this zone states have sovereign rights, such as exclusive
claim to live marine resources. Vessels from other countries have the right of
innocent passage. A contiguous zone exists
to 24 nm (38 km), in which coastal states can enforce customs, immigration and
environmental laws, and enjoy the right of ‘hot pursuit’ of hostile aircraft
and vessels. An exclusive economic zone exists
up to 200 nm (370 km). Within this EEZ, the state has exclusive rights to
explore and exploit all types of natural and marine resources in both waters and
on and beneath the seabed. If the continental shelf continues beyond the coast,
countries can exploit this up to 350 nm (560 km). Vessels have all rights of
innocent passage. The high seas are
beyond the EEZ’s of states. They are open to all states, and no state has the
right to interfere with others sailing, fishing, flying over or engaging in
scientific research. Mineral resources are to be managed for the common benefit
of humanity.

These provisions of the Law of the Sea became a formal part of
international law in 1994.

Frontiers are
politically weak regions or places between two or more states or political units
that are often ecologically marginal, but may be ascribed strategic
significance. Boundaries are weakly developed, poorly delimited or perhaps
nonexistent. Tibet and Afghanistan provide historical examples. During the
nineteenth century these arid, highland regions were sites of conflict between
the British and Russian Empires. In what was called “The Great Game,” both
empires vied for influence with local rulers and peoples as the British sought
to prevent Russian expansion toward India, which was the ‘jewel in the
Crown’ of the British Empire. Today, Tibet is ruled by China, another powerful
state, and Afghanistan is now dominated by the United States, and is struggling
to rebuild a sense of nationhood from disparate regions after more than twenty
years of civil war and foreign interference.

Geopoliticscan
be defined as the application of geographical knowledge and insights to problems
of power and earth-space. Typically, a geopolitical approach to statecraft
entails a strategic approach to a state’s foreign policy that applies this
geographical knowledge to maximize the power of a state relative to other states
in world politics and the global economy. Even cultural influence, what is
currently called ‘soft power,’ can be applied geopolitically. Remember that
in interstate relations, power means the ability to coerce or convince other
states to behave in a way which accords with one’s own national interests.
This also means the ability to set the agenda in intergovernmental organizations
such as the United Nations, and to prevent other items or issues from being
dealt with or discussed if these are not in accord with the state’s interests.

Some of the most important
thinkers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century highlight this kind of
classical geopolitics. Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), influenced by the social
Darwinism of the late nineteenth century, believed that states behave like
organisms, and that they must grow in power at the expense of other states, or
they will decline and eventually be eclipsed in power by other states. As a
German university professor, he wrote in the context of Germany’s rise as an
industrial and military power before the First World War (1914-1918). The
Swedish academic Rudolf Kjellen (1864-1922) took this argument one step further,
insisting that the state is an organism, which must expand or decline.
His ideas influenced geopolitics in Nazi Germany (1933-1945), with Hitler’s
belief that Germany must expand eastward into the Heartland of Eurasia to seek
resources, slave labor and greater lebensraum (living space) for the
German people. This concept of a Eurasian World Island and Eastern European
Heartland had come from the British politician and geographer Sir Halford
Mackinder (1861-1947). Writing as the British Empire was at its height, he
believed that land powers such as Russia would soon eclipse maritime powers such
as Britain due to the superior resources and population base of the Eurasian
Heartland. Thus the saying, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who
rules the Heartland commands the World-Island: Who rules the World-Island
commands the World.” Geopolitical thinking at the scale of the state continues
to influence the most powerful states in the global interstate system, although
the specific ideas change with shifts in technology and society.

An excellent case study of
geopolitics in action is provided by the Cold War, which began about 1947
and ended with the decline of the Soviet Union from 1989-1991.This struggle between the post-Second World War superpower, the United
States and the Soviet Union, was characterized by the division of world politics
into three spheres or ‘worlds’: a capitalist First World, led by the United
States, a communist Second World led by the Soviet Union, and a multifaceted
Third World of recently decolonized states in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The geographical form of the struggle was the division of Europe between a
communist East and capitalist West, and the efforts of the United States and the
Soviet Union to gain allies in the Third World. This entailed the use of these
countries as proxies, in which the superpowers could indirectly fight each other
for power in the global system. For example, Cuba was an important ally of the
Soviet Union after the rise to power of Fidel Castro in 1959. For a brief
period, China was also an ally of the Soviets, though these two powers
eventually split by 1960. Many other states in the Third World were forced to
choose sides in this conflict, which often had devastating results for the
world’s poorest countries, in which civil wars were intensified by the sale of
weapons to rival armies by the US and Soviet Union. Sometimes the two powers
intervened directly. The United States attempted to keep Vietnam divided into a
non-communist South and communist North, but ultimately failed because many
Vietnamese believed the American forces were foreign invaders rather than
protectors. In an eerily similar conflict, the Soviet Union sent forces to
Afghanistan in December 1979, to prop up a communist government that had taken
power in that country. The United States and its Persian Gulf ally Saudi Arabia
perceived this to be the prelude to a possible move on the oil-rich Gulf region
and decided to support the Muslim mujahadeen rebels fighting to establish
an Islamic state in the country. Among these rebels was a young guerilla fighter
and financier of Saudi-Yemeni background named Osama bin Laden. While the
Soviets eventually withdrew (in 1988) after suffering heavy casualties,
Afghanistan became a failed state, with the fundamentalist Taliban regime
eventually taking control of most of the country. They in turn provided the
bases and logistical support for al-Qaeda.

The strategies and policies of this period
were identified with certain practitioners of geopolitics. In the United States,
the most famous were Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State during the Nixon
(1969-1974) and Ford (1974-1976) Administrations and Zbigniew Brzezinski,
National Security Adviser during the Carter Administration (1977-1981).
Kissinger and Brzezinski were both convinced of the need to maintain the
strategic ‘credibility’ of the US by preventing the Soviet Union from
gaining influence in regions deemed strategically vital. This was accomplished
through the use of covert military actions, spying, and destabilizing
governments that were perceived to be too close to the Soviet Union, or too
critical of the US. Both men ultimately pursued a vision of geopolitics that
would have been very familiar to Mackinder.

We can see from these examples that local
geographical and socio-economic conditions were often set aside by the
superpowers in the name of ideological competition. The resulting proxy wars of
this period would prove to have destructive consequences for all concerned,
particularly the Third World countries that were victimized by civil conflict,
repression and superpower interference. Both superpowers engaged in these
activities, though one can debate the relative merits of their respective
socio-economic and political systems.

Globalization refers
to the economic, political and cultural processes through which the certain
states, regions and cities in the world are being tied together into a global
system. These processes have accelerated due to the rapid advancements in
information technology or IT during the last two decades or so. For example,
computer technology allows for twenty-four hour financial trading in global
cities of the Core economic regions. However, it is important to note that the
spread of capitalism and its opportunities and instabilities is not uniform over
space: most of the benefits accrue to transnational corporations and
their shareholders in Core countries. Some of these TNC’s, as they are known,
are wealthier and more powerful than states in peripheral regions. In fact, the
economic relations of core and periphery established during colonialism have not
substantially changed, though some countries have managed to develop
economically out of the periphery. Examples include the Four Asian Tiger
economies: Korea (South), Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Another key aspect of
globalization is the phenomenon of ‘coming together and coming apart.’
Through investment and the spread of different cultural ideas, goods and peoples
into many regions of the earth, some peoples and groups have reacted very
negatively to the new conditions of multiculturalism and change. Thus, we have
the phenomenon described by Canadian political scientist Benjamin Barber in his
book, ‘Jihad vs. McWorld’, that various forms of fundamentalism are in
struggle with the materialist capitalism of the global economy.The geographer Jean Gottman, writing in the 1950’s, remarkably
anticipated a key aspect of these processes through his analysis of how regions
and peoples struggle to preserve their identities through iconography in the
face of increasing instability in their lives due to capital flows, migrations
and other shifts in economy, society and politics. This idea of iconography
versus flows is playing out in various ways in different parts of the world. An
example is the reassertion of religious identities such as Christian among
political groups and region in the US, Islamic in various societies of North
Africa and Southwest Asia, and Hindu within the context of Indian politics. To
make matters more complex, transnational communities maintain a sense of
identity through maintenance of social institutions in countries or regions
where they are a minority. For example, the Chinese and Indian communities in
the US and many other societies are noted for a strong sense of ethnic and
religious identity in many different geographical settings.

Transnational issues
include environmental degradation, narcotrafficking, terrorism, migration, and
the spread of disease. The increasing emphasis on these issues by state elites
is indicative of the stress that globalization has exerted on states, and the
difficulties that states have in dealing with these issues. The flow of
processed coca into the United States, terror attacks and complex issues related
to the environment reflect these dilemmas.

Finally, these issues of geopolitics, and
identity highlight the importance of studying peoples and places within a local
context. Seeing the world through simplistic eyes leads us to make easy and
false generalizations about certain categories of persons, and this can lead to
tragic errors in politics and policy. Globalization(s) have led some geographers
to a less state-based and more postmodern approach to studying the world.
By this we mean taking regions and peoples on their own terms, acknowledging
complexity and diversity, and seeking to encourage policies that acknowledge
these realities.